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Daily Slice: Pizzeria Luigi, San Diego

Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.

[Photographs: Erin Jackson]

Pizzeria Luigi has some of the best thin crust, hand-tossed pizza in San Diego. The shop, owned by Italian-born Luigi Agostini, has locations in Golden Hill and North Park, both of which are long-standing neighborhood favorites that grew to icon status after being featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, where Luigi revealed that his famous tomato sauce is made with a generous helping of Parmesan cheese.

I tried two slices: pesto chicken and pepperoni with ricotta, jalapeno peppers, and pineapple ($2.75 each).The chicken pesto (a white pie) was covered with a thick layer of freshly-grated mozzarella topped with tender cubes of chicken, sweet sun-dried tomato, and speckles of fresh pesto. It was a well-balanced slice with a subtle touch of heat and garlic.

Most surprising was the ricotta pepperoni slice (on the right), which had some unusual bedfellows—jalapeno peppers and pineapple. Eating this slice was like sampling three different pizzas at once; some bites were sweet, others were hot, but the very best bites were those with a bit of everything. The seemingly strange combo of salty pepperoni, creamy ricotta, sweet pineapple, and hot jalapeno peppers makes for an exceptionally flavorful and diverse slice. It's killer.

Luigi's hand-tossed crust is thin and much chewier than most, with a golden brown bottom covered in tiny blisters. The extra time you'll spend chewing it is a blessing—the pizza is so good, you'll want to linger over it as long as possible.